Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

By Timothy Sandefur

New York: Viking Press, 2018

576 pp. $35 (hardcover).

Under the daily barrage of bad news, it would be easy to lose perspective and even to conclude, in the words of a 2016 New York Times article, that “humanity is screwed.” But Harvard professor Steven Pinker has a different view, and his book Enlightenment Now lays out a powerful case for cultural optim…